Chapter 95. Into the Hollow

The ridge had gone quiet after the scream. Not silent—quiet. The kind of quiet that followed storms, where the world seemed to lean sideways, uncertain whether it had survived or only dreamed survival.

The woman who had stepped into the wound—vessel, devotee, martyr, no one could yet name her—no longer screamed. She hung in the air above the shimmering absence, her body slack, yet the null field pulsed to her rhythm. With each throb of her heart, the wound widened.

No one moved.

Aria’s throat burned, but she forced sound through it anyway. “She isn’t carrying it. It’s carrying her.”

Cassandra’s blade gleamed, steady even though her hand shook. “Then cut her down.”

Jules’s breath hitched. “No—wait. Look.”

The woman’s eyes snapped open. They were black, not like shadow but like inverted light—depth without bottom. And as her gaze swept across the ridge, everyone who met it staggered as though pieces of themselves had been plucked away.

Aria st